Smoking-cessation support for non-Japanese patients using the STOP SMOKING application

Abstract

Objective As smoking is not allowed at most medical institutions, it is important to provide smoking cessation support for smoking patients. However, the lack of human resources is the biggest problem for smoking cessation support. Moreover, it is concerned that there are little supports for non-Japanese smokers. According to the ministry of health, labor and welfare, approximately 90% of medical institutions in Japan have some problems for multilingual support, such as delay and lack of translated manuals, maps and signs for non-Japanese patients. To provide smoking cessation support for Japanese and non-Japanese patients within daily duties related to hospitalization guide, we created a new device. Methods We create a multilingual smoking cessation support tool, called STOP SMOKING application. Results This application has three advantages. First, it contains not only smoking cessation support information but also admission interview sheets. Therefore, it can be used for orientation in hospitalization and inform that smoking is not allowed. Secondly, the tool can also identify who is a current smoker and provides information to motivate smoking cessation depends on each patient’s treatment, purpose, and their age. Thirdly, it has English, Chinese and Portuguese version. Conclusions STOP SMOKING Application will be useful to support Japanese and non-Japanese smoking patients on admission. This application will be provided to hospitals requesting, for free during the project implementation period.

Keywords

• smoking cessation application
• STOP SMOKING application